On April 22nd, BYD Tang family ushered in the launch of a new model. The starting price of 219,800 yuan and the standard Yunqi -C made the new car extremely competitive. Taking the opportunity of this driving and control experience camp in Hantang Yunqi -C, Jiao Ge will take you to experience how fragrant the dual flagship of Hantang with Yunqi -C is!
Test drive evaluation
Author: Chen Bin
Fashion brings people pleasure and even madness. People are crazy about fashion. What are they pursuing? The General History of Fashion, written by Marni Fogg, runs through the deep historical depth, from 500 BC to the present, which is as long as 2,500 years. It is all-encompassing, detailed and detailed, just like an encyclopedia. Through this magnificent picture, readers can see the rich projection of human history on fashion.
A General History of Fashion (Second Edition) [English] Manu Fogg translated by Chen Lei and published by China Pictorial Publishing House.
Fashion is an upgraded version of fashion power expression.
What is fashion? This seems to be well known, but it is difficult to summarize it accurately in one or two sentences.
For Chinese people, the word fashion is "imported", but fashion has never been absent in history, such as the openness and freedom of women’s dress in the Tang Dynasty, which is still impressive. Fashion and fashion are inseparable, and fashion is the mainstream of fashion history. Mani pointed out straight away: "The word" Fashion "comes from the Latin word" ‘Facito’ ",which literally means" making ".It is used to express all kinds of values, including such different concepts as consistency and social connection, rebellion and eccentricity, social desire and status, temptation and deception. The desire to dress up has broken through the limitations of history, culture and geography. Although the form and content may be different, the motivation is the same, dressing up the human body and expressing identity. "
Mani’s explanation is very comprehensive, the main meaning is nothing more than these aspects, that is, fashion symbolizes a kind of value and is the embodiment of identity; There are both inheritance and rebellion in fashion, and some people’s visions are often mixed. Fashion is essentially an external dress of the body.
The costumes in the initial stage of human civilization were rather crude. About 11,000 years ago, people gradually got rid of fishing, hunting and gathering life and began to settle down. Animal skins and plants that were only used by human ancestors to keep out the cold or disguise at that time gradually evolved into clothing. Living conditions are bad, materials are in short supply, and human beings don’t have many choices. Those who can wear animal skins are probably the "heads" who have more power.
The connotation of clothing being empowered has become an important carrier for the ruling class to defend its "sacred" status. To this end, the ruling class strives to innovate in clothing to show off the superiority of power.
"The concept of fashion is usually regarded as unique to western society and originated from the court in the 14th century." At that time, Europe’s commercial economy developed, capitalism began to sprout, and the status of emerging civil classes improved. "The combination of court and commerce brought the birth of modern fashion industry." In order to ensure the superiority of the ruling class’s clothing, on the one hand, power shows its unique luxury, on the other hand, it introduces a "ban on luxury".
Through Marni’s exhibition of history, we can see that "the gorgeous court costumes in Italy in the 14th century reflected the desire for luxurious silk decoration"; Women in the Tang Dynasty rushed to enlarge their sleeves, so that the court had to specifically limit their size; In fact, the "Twelve Orders" of women’s dresses in heian period Palace are composed of 10 to 25 pieces of silk, "each outer garment should show a part of the inner one"; The pleated headscarf advocated by the French court also symbolizes wealth.
The prohibition of luxury is an important starting point to distinguish power from ordinary people in the history of eastern and western courts. The medieval European court stipulated that ordinary people could not wear expensive silk from the East at will, and the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan also issued the same ban, while the ban on luxury in Myanmar focused on jewelry …
Mastering power means mastering the power of resources, so social aesthetics inevitably has a strong power color. In this sense, fashion is also one of the crystallization of power aesthetics. For a long time in history, the focus of fashion manufacturing is often the focus of power accumulation, which is why "the king of Chu has a thin waist and many people starve to death in the palace". Worship of power clothing, metaphor of obedience and proximity to power, even without asking why.
Through Manilow’s clothing styles, we can see that the power clothing show existed before the 14th century, so why didn’t the fashion tour start until the 14th century? On the one hand, it benefited from the prosperous development of European commerce, on the other hand, it was the changes brought about by the Renaissance. The social material is getting richer and the basic food and clothing is improving gradually, which provides an important material basis for the ordinary people to pursue higher clothing. Under the pressure of folk imitation enthusiasm, the power center had to speed up the pace of clothing novelty, which in turn stimulated the enthusiasm of the people, so the clothing realized the gorgeous turn of fashion.
Fashion is a short-lived accelerated version of fashion.
At that time, the clothing changed from the function of keeping out the cold to the so-called aesthetic significance, so it was doomed that no matter how warm it was, it could not last long. Coco chanel is a classic that never dies, but only the brand remains, and its connotation and form have been constantly updated with the pace of time. Even the "created tradition" like Scottish skirts is not what it used to be, and there are obvious differences in details such as fabrics and styles.
Mani pointed out that "fashion is often considered to be one-off, capricious and fleeting". Eric hobsbawm, a famous British historian, wrote in The Extreme Age: 1941-1991: "Why are outstanding fashion designers, a well-known group that is not good at analysis, sometimes able to predict the development of things more accurately than professional prophets? This is one of the most difficult problems in history; For cultural historians, this is the most important issue. For anyone who wants to understand the impact of the era of upheaval on high culture, elite art, and especially the avant-garde, this is definitely a key issue. " If you solve the question, you can’t call it fashion. Fashion is always so abstract and elusive.
Fashion was born from the imitation of power body performance, so, "Fashion is very good at’ borrowing’, which draws inspiration from different cultures and different historical times". Fashion developed with the improvement of production level, that is, the industrial age. Under the competitive pursuit of various new technology fabrics, new technologies and media, although there are still customized fashions like Valentino, a century-old shop, which insist on hand-making, fashion has since embarked on the fast lane of industrialization. This also shows that the more advanced the technology, the more branches of concepts, and the shorter the fashion.
Industrialization provides conditions for the rapid development of fashion, but fashion is not naturally produced by assembly line. There is a continuation of history and a rebellion against reality in fashion, just like the absurd clothes of American hippies. Fashion is the product of society first, and technology is only one of the factors. But historical factors often occupy an extremely important position. "From 1850 to 1860, at that time, men had to change clothes four times a day", and "the prince of Wales’ obsession with clothes-he usually changed six sets of clothes every day-started the fashion people". Without these historical deposits, fashion might be another look.
No matter how amazing the fashion is, it is only a flash in the pan. The steel petticoat patented in Britain in 1856 seems extremely bulky today, but it was all the rage at that time. There are many forces that provide acceleration for fashion, and the court in history bears the brunt. It is like a big stage. Nowadays, the entertainment industry is firmly at the top of fashion. Hollywood is undoubtedly the biggest promoter of fashion in the last century. With the help of light and shadow art, a large number of stars such as Hepburn and Monroe are competing to become the leaders of fashion trends. Fashion also benefits from the rapid development of media technology. Words, photos, light and shadow are deeply involved in fashion, which helps to spread the influence of fashion to the maximum extent and attract more people to fashion trends.
Another force to promote the development of fashion can not be ignored. Mani pointed out that during the Edo era in Japan, the dress code was very strict, but "high-end prostitutes often dressed according to the most popular fashion." Wu Renshu also pointed out in the book "Luxury Women: Consumer Culture of Jiangnan Women in Ming and Qing Dynasties" that as a high-income group in Ming and Qing Dynasties, some "women who lost their social life" did play the role of pursuing fashion or even leading the trend.
Interestingly, unlike the historical power deliberately creating fashion focus, with the demagoguery of modern politics, the distance between power and civilians is getting closer and closer, and it is becoming more and more difficult to create class differences through material. This means that power is no longer the main driving force of fashion butterfly change. Power withdrew, and the business and entertainment circles quickly succeeded in filling the position. Today, there are still a few politicians among the spectators of several famous show halls around the world, but entertainment stars are the frequent visitors on the red carpet. Entertainment is synonymous with fashion, and fashion is like a business card that never fades.
Fashion is a condensed version of fashion power aesthetics.
Aesthetic, different people have different opinions, but the fashion is different, which has obvious characteristics of public recognition. What kind of fashion conforms to the aesthetic taste of the public is extremely difficult to answer. If the fashion beauty that people are obsessed with in history is essentially the beauty of power, what is the symbol of today’s fashion?
In 1750, the German philosopher Baumgarden, known as the "father of aesthetics", defined it in his monograph Aesthetics: "Aesthetics (as the theory of free art, low-level epistemology, the art of beautiful thinking and the art of thinking similar to reason) is the science of perceptual knowledge." He defined aesthetics as perceptual science because he thought that "since people’s psychological activities can be divided into three aspects: knowledge, emotion and meaning, and since we specialize in the logic of knowledge and the ethics of meaning, we should also establish a science specializing in emotion, otherwise the philosophical system will be incomplete". According to its definition, aesthetics is the product of acquired cognition. Newborn babies don’t know what beauty and ugliness are. Only when the power defines the connotation of beauty and ugliness, does society really have aesthetics.
It is power that creates aesthetics, which covers all aspects of society. Fashion is only a condensed version of power aesthetics. Louis XIV thought that fashion was a symbol of absolute power. After the Manchu entered the Central Plains, they not only changed the Han people in their clothes, but also forced to leave their iconic long braids. However, at the beginning, the Han people refused to submit, and when the Qing Dynasty fell, many people fought to the death to hold on to this "ancestral family business". Once the power aesthetics goes deep into the bone marrow, it becomes a life over time. Later, what I didn’t like in the past not only looked good, but also saw another kind of "beauty".
Of course, some fashions in history have no obvious coercive significance, and power has only demonstrated some things, which still benefit people today. Brumel, a playboy, also makes people pay attention to personal hygiene. He brushes his teeth, shaves and takes a bath every day. Brumel’s fashion move has become the daily life of most people today.
As a book that presents the development of fashion rather than explores the reasons, this book may cause readers to have other questions. For example, in French and British court fashion, male fashion once occupied an absolute position. Why did fashion later become a paradise for women? One more thing, fashion is not without negative effects, for example, it will lead to huge waste, and it may also have a negative impact on the environment-Europeans’ fanatical pursuit of fur clothing directly gave birth to the fur trade in North America for three centuries, resulting in a serious survival crisis for species such as beavers, beavers, beavers and buffaloes there. (Chen Bin)
Source: Wen Wei Po
Peninsula/text The first time I met football was the 1998 World Cup. Before that, I couldn’t understand how charming this little ball can be, and it can make hundreds of millions of people crazy, cry, beat their chests and feet, and stay awake …
That summer of 1998, my first impression of football was colorful. In the stadium, there are Nigeria’s green, Brazil’s yellow, Italy’s blue, Holland’s orange, Spain’s red, Argentina’s blue and white, Croatia’s red and white plaid … Football is really beautiful! In the stands, there are flags and banners flying everywhere, and all kinds of graffiti on the faces of the audience. From a distance from the TV, there are uniform and consistent colors, and there are also mixed and competing … Football is really beautiful!
I love the World Cup because it is everywhere. Teams from different civilization backgrounds meet and confront each other in the same venue to show their skills, tactics and team features. Moreover, the story of football is not just 90 minutes on the court. Why are Italian and Spanish players depressed and sunny, while German players are introverted? The answer may be found on the map. Brazil and Argentina like dancing when celebrating goals? Think about the story of samba and tango! They say Americans don’t know football? They have more favorite sports! How is the core of the French team descended from Algerians? Read the history of the Middle East!
This is football, which is not only a physical confrontation on the court, but also a conflict between civilizations. This is football, which is not only the subtle cooperation between teammates, but also the integration and coexistence of different cultural styles. I love football, I love it, I love football, I love it. I love football, love it makes people passionate, I love football, love it makes people calm as ice. Just like in the game, everyone is fighting for every inch of land, even blocking each other with rude fouls. After the game, they shake hands, hug and exchange jerseys and appreciate each other. It is the fire and ice of the modern world.
In the football match, the winner is king, and the loser is never a coach. Next to every champion, there are many respectable opponents. Behind the carnival of every winner are the tears of countless losers. In the world of football, the ultimate victory is the jewel in the crown, and failure is the main theme. But this is the greatest charm of this sport: real fighters will not bow their heads because of failure, and real fans will not quit because of failure. Instead, they still choose to love and fight after setbacks. This is football. Never give up hope until the last moment, so countless stadium miracles will be born. No matter how ingenious the director and screenwriter are, they can’t create a script about football.
Don’t judge heroes by success or failure, and create a belief that belongs exclusively to football. There are too many stories about "one person, one city" in football, and more people will always have ideals in order to support the team, and they will not hesitate to get from youth to old age. If you understand football, you can understand why under the same roof, there will be hardcore rivals; Why the same city, the same country, and even the same world, will give birth to enemies who are at odds and incompatible with each other. Because of the belief in football, it can penetrate the gains and losses of victory and defeat and carve it into the blood.
I like a friend’s words very much. He said that football is still classical today when capital erodes everything. Capital can buy players, but it can’t take away victory; Capital can determine strength, but it can’t replace faith; Capital can create a giant team, but it can’t stop grassroots from springing up like mushrooms after rain. It is true that there are high salaries, luxury cars and feasts in the football world, but if we trace the past of the stars and review the experiences in slums and mud pits, what made them choose football? It is love and hope.
This is football. Even though I’m a poor player, even though I’m no longer young, even though I’m from hopeful to disappointed again and again, I’ll still cheer for it, applaud it and stay awake at night for it.
Image source: the idea of the worm
Live on May 21st-In a game that ended in the current Premier League, Liverpool drew 1-1 with Aston Villa, and firmino scored an equalizer.
This game is Liverpool’s last home game of the season. After the game, the whole Liverpool team lined up to say goodbye to firmino, who was about to leave the team, and the fans applauded constantly.
Text/writing on the world of mortals
In recent seasons, Shougang team’s record is getting worse and worse. Last season, it stopped in the quarter-finals, and this season it stopped in the quarter-finals.
Head coach Leiden
Shougang team is about to fall apart.
The input of each season is inversely proportional to the results of the season. In the CBA league, there are three local tyrants, namely Shougang, Xinjiang and Shanghai. Shougang executives always want to realize the dream of championship, but the championship is always farther and farther away from Shougang team.
Changing coaches has become a common practice of Shougang team. If it is not satisfactory, it will change coaches, and it will change people’s hearts and make the team’s performance decline. Stop the semi-finals this season, and this summer is another wave of coaching changes. Change players!
Song Xiang Weibo Content
According to Song Xiang, a famous basketball reporter, many players in the team have expired contracts, including Fang Shuo, Fan Ziming, Zhang Cairen, Tian Yuxiang, Raymond, Fan Yiming and Yang Ali.
Ramon
According to the well-known blogger "Inspector Zhao of Ball Circle", Raymond will calm down and consider renewing the contract after the contract with Shougang team expires this summer. From Raymond’s words, the possibility of leaving Shougang team is not ruled out. Why should Raymond consider renewing the contract? Is to see if Shougang executives will give him a top salary contract. If they give him a top salary contract, they will renew it. If they don’t, they will pat their ass and leave. Raymond is a very good striker, and he may get a top salary contract in other teams.
Raymond’s performance this season is quite satisfactory, averaging 21.8 minutes, averaging 8 points, 3 rebounds, 0.8 assists and 0.8 steals.
Fan Ziming
There are also players Fan Ziming. In fact, Fan Ziming has some abilities, at least better than Zou Yuchen, Changdong Yu and Sun Tonglin of Beijing Control Team. Fan Ziming’s contract also expires this summer. If Shougang doesn’t renew his contract with the highest salary, Fan Ziming may also leave Shougang.
Fan Ziming’s performance this season is remarkable, averaging 22.3 minutes and 12.8 points per game, ranking 13th in the league, averaging 5 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1 steal and 0.5 blocks per game, with comprehensive data. He is a very good inside player.
From Fan Ziming’s words, we can vaguely find the following information.
Fan Ziming said: "I hope that in the future, I can impact the achievements like Zhai Xiaochuan, Fang Shuo and Zhu Yanxi!"
Zhai Xiaochuan averaged 26.8 points per game and 10.5 points per game; Fang Shuo averaged 30.8 minutes per game and 14 points per game; Zhu Yan played 16 minutes per game, averaging 5 points.
Judging from these data, they are not as efficient as Fan Ziming! What are you studying? In fact, I am complimenting these "ball tyrants"!
From this sentence, we can find at least two pieces of information: First, Fan Ziming is obviously suspected of flattery, holding the thick legs of Zhai Xiaochuan, Fang Shuo and Zhu Yanxi. Secondly, Fan Ziming’s own performance was excellent enough, and in turn flattering these three players is enough to prove that these three players play an important role in the team.
Happened in Fang Shuo and Zhai Xiaochuan.
From Fan Ziming’s words, it means that Zhai Xiaochuan, Fang Shuo and Zhu Yanxi are "ball tyrants".
If Shougang’s top management lets the "ball bully" run roughshod over, then the "ball bully" is the accelerator for Shougang’s team to fall apart.
It is no wonder that many basketball reporters have predicted that Shougang’s summer is doomed to be unsettled, and it is also very likely that it will fall apart.
Du Feng, the head coach of Guangdong Province, was furious and tore his face with "Big Brother".
On April 20th, after the Guangdong team lost in the away game against Guangsha team, the big score between the two teams became 1: 1. Guangsha team will play at the home of Guangdong team in the next game. If Guangsha team wins Guangdong team at one go and Du Feng loses the "Battle of Tianwangshan" at home, the joke will be big! It’s no wonder that Du Feng was very angry and furious in this game, and he was torn with the head coach "Big Brother".
When the game went to 5 minutes and 33 seconds in the third quarter, Yi Jianlian made a three-point long-range throw and came out of the basket without anyone defending. Later, Jeff ran to the sidelines to save the ball. Jeff jumped high and grabbed the rebound in the frontcourt. After that, Jeff passed the ball to Yi Jianlian. After Yi Jianlian grabbed the ball, he directly pushed it to Jeff with his hand, while Jeff was still outside the court and had not returned to the court. As a result, a ball that he had originally got was out of bounds, and Yi Jianlian made a mistake.
Du Feng angered Yi Jianlian.
When the Guangdong team paused, Du Feng spat lotus flowers with a tactical board, which was a wave of output to Yi Jianlian, which was obviously rude to Yi Jianlian. In the face of this situation, Yi Jianlian is also trying to wipe his sweat with towels one after another to cover up the embarrassing situation of being scolded. As the "big brother" of the team, Yi Jianlian is indeed older, unable to keep up with his pace and his physical strength has also declined. This game was also fouled five times by the opponent. At ordinary times, Du Feng rarely accused Yi Jianlian, and this time it was Du Feng’s fast break.
In the past, Du Feng always regarded Yi Jianlian as a "buddy". This time, maybe Du Feng was also in a hurry, and he was torn with Yi Jianlian. For the first time, he put himself in the position of head coach and relegated his former "buddy" to the role of a player.
Actually, Yi Jianlian should really retire and leave his position and top salary to young people to exercise. It may also be that Yi Jianlian, out of his love for basketball, is unwilling to leave the court and has deep feelings for the Guangdong team.
[Original works, no handling, infringement will be investigated]
Sportico, a sports commercial media, released top50, the historical income of sports. There are 4 football players and 13 basketball players on the list. Through this list, many people are surprised why football and basketball players earn so much. Who is the first sport after all?
First of all, we need to see what sports are on this list. This list covers all sports, such as boxing, tennis, golf, etc., and among the athletes he counts, there are active athletes and retired athletes. Beckham has been retired for many years and still appears on this list. Of course, this is related to his shrewd business mind after retirement.
Secondly, the more people there are, the fewer people are on the list, such as tennis, golf, boxing and so on. I am a "team" by myself, and I can maximize my benefits in commercial packaging and participating projects. If you only look at this list, you can’t exactly define which sport is the first in the world.
Sports such as football, rugby and basketball cannot be done by one person, and the daily expenses of professional football clubs in Europe are also very high. The echelon of all ages, venue maintenance, etc., the more people, the more daily staff and coaches are needed. The financial pressure of clubs is not small, and only a few clubs can achieve profitability.
In addition, the development of commercial value, football project is not done well. Like the American NBA, teams have stars, and there is almost a strong dialogue in every round, so the level difference between teams will not be great. In addition, because the NBA level is unique in the World Cup, it has attracted the attention of all outstanding basketball players all over the world, and playing in the NBA is the dream of many players. The NBA is more beautiful than other basketball games in the world.
Football is different. There are five recognized top leagues. Every league has 18-20 teams. This is equivalent to having five NBA’s, plus for various reasons. There is a big gap between top teams and other teams, which also makes many games less beautiful. This is also the reason why some people are promoting the European Super League. It is the original intention of the European Super League to make teams and players get more income and let fans see more exciting games.
It is one-sided to judge who is the world’s number one sport only from income. Judging from the attention of sports events, the participation of the people, the income of teams and players, football is still the first sport in the world.
Recently, SaaS giant Salesforce announced the launch of a $250 million fund, which is by far the largest AIGC venture capital fund.
In this regard, CEO Clara Shih said that the fund will focus on "cultivating the next generation of artificial intelligence startups".
Some analysts also said that although the generative AI like ChatGPT itself amazed the public. However, their greatest role in the enterprise lies in their combination with the company’s business, which is obviously the goal of Salesforce.
However, judging from today’s stock price performance, the heavy AI did not make this old SaaS manufacturer dead.
250 million US dollars, which has exceeded the net profit of last year.
Different from VC’s pursuit of high returns, as a typical CVC, Salesforce chose to set up the fund at this time more likely because of industry competition and stock price considerations.
We saw that the foundation of the fund was announced at its annual conference TrailblazerDX. At that time, the company announced three major initiatives in generating artificial intelligence:
First, Salesforce is integrating generative artificial intelligence into customer relationship management products under Einstein GPT. These new features are designed to combine the data in Salesforce with a series of generative AI engines (including engines from OpenAI and Cohere), so that customers can seize the initiative in making marketing emails, writing supporting articles and even making computer code.
Second, Salesforce announced its cooperation with OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT available directly from Slack. This function is currently in the testing stage and will be launched on a large scale later this year.
Third, Salesforce Ventures is launching a $250 million investment fund to support generative AI startups.
There are several backgrounds that have to be mentioned behind these three measures.
First of all, on the eve of releasing its new AI product, Salesforce released a survey result, which showed that although some IT leaders expressed concern about AI, most people thought it could help them better support customers and improve data insight. Even 67% of the respondents said that they would give priority to this technology in the next 18 months, and one-third of the respondents thought it would be their top priority.
At the same time, Salesforce believes that it has identified several areas where artificial intelligence is reshaping the sales pattern: artificial intelligence insight of sales, natural language chat robots for service requests, targeted marketing content and personalized e-commerce experience.
Secondly, at the end of last year, after OpenAI’s ChatGPT broadened the imagination of the technology industry, many large companies rushed to announce the function of using artificial intelligence to generate content. Last month alone, Microsoft integrated OpenAI technology into Bing, Google announced the launch of ChatGPT competitor Bard, Meta released one of its large language models under the open source license, and Snapchat launched a social generation tool.
In addition, Microsoft recently launched Dynamic 365 Copilot, a functional assistant tool for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) based on artificial intelligence, which directly extended its hand to the territory of traditional enterprise software platforms such as Zoho, Salesforce and IBM.
A consensus in the field of science and technology is that it is often fatal to miss the first advantage of technology, so we have seen Salesforce’s heavy investment in AI.
More importantly, the deployment of AI and the launch of Slack’s new ChatGPT application are at a critical moment when the board members of Salesforce are replaced, and investors have been pushing for new changes. Even at the beginning of this year, the company cut 10% of its employees.
As we all know, affected by the macro-environment, the market value of American SaaS companies suffered a decline in different degrees in 2022, and Salesforce was not spared. Salesforce is also under pressure from investors. Using the white-hot trend of generating artificial intelligence can help companies resist concerns about their growth prospects.
It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of this month, Salesforce released the latest financial report data. According to the financial report, the revenue of Salesforce in fiscal year 2023 was $31.4 billion, an increase of 18% year-on-year. However, the income growth rate has slowed down this fiscal year. Its revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023 was $8.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14%, which was lower than the annual growth rate.
In terms of profit, salesforce’s operating profit in fiscal year 2023 was $1 billion, compared with $500 million in the previous fiscal year, which was significantly improved this fiscal year. This fiscal year, the company’s net profit was $200 million, compared with $1.4 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal year, and the net profit in the latest fiscal year decreased by 86%.
It can be seen that the scale of the AIGC fund has exceeded the net profit of Salesforce last year, which can be seen from the investment.
According to public data, Wall Street analysts agreed that earnings per share (EPS) in the fourth quarter was $1.36. However, the company reported earnings per share of $1.68, far exceeding expectations. In addition, the average income of analysts is estimated to be about $8 billion, while the company’s revenue in the fourth quarter was $8.4 billion.
But despite the amazing revenue growth of Salesforce in recent years, it is expected to achieve the goal of reaching $50 billion in sales in fiscal year 2026. But its share price trend has been developing in the opposite direction. Since December 2020, the company’s share price has plummeted by nearly 30%.
It is not difficult to see that Salesforce is eager for the growth prospects of its performance.
The first four companies to be selected.
Back to Salesforce, the new fund itself. Although the fund is the largest fund of Salesforce Ventures, it is not the first dedicated AI fund. As early as 2017, it raised $50 million for the artificial intelligence innovation fund to support its Einstein artificial intelligence toolset.
According to PitchBook, Salesforce Ventures has participated in 140 venture capital transactions of artificial intelligence and machine learning startups, accounting for about 19% of its total investment so far.
John Somorjai, executive vice president of Salesforce enterprise development and Salesforce Ventures, said: "for more than ten years, Salesforce Ventures has been investing in high-potential enterprise technology business, and these initial investments of the fund to generate artificial intelligence companies are fully in line with this strategy."
In fact, in the past decade, Salesforce Ventures has raised more than a dozen funds, ranging in size from $50 million to $125 million, and has also launched a series of vertically specific investment funds, including funds targeting specific regions such as Japan or Canada.
But before, Salesforce Ventures usually invested in enterprise cloud startups. After all, such investments may become more important for this software company because of the restrictions on large-scale acquisitions. For example, it has invested in star companies such as Zoom and DocuSign, and invested heavily in Snowflake IPO.
It is precisely because of its huge transaction scale and strategic value that Salesforce Ventures has always been regarded as the king of SaaS unicorns. At the same time, some people think that it may continue this myth in the AI field.
It is reported that the fund has invested in four start-up companies: You.com, a upstart search engine, just launched the generation of artificial intelligence a few months ago; Anthropic, an AI startup founded by former employees of OpenAI and highly sought after by VC, developed ChatGPT；; Cohere, a natural language processing (NLP) startup that recently cooperated with Google; And a secret startup called Hearth.AI
Specifically, Richard Socher, the founder of You.com, is the former chief scientist of Salesforce. The company was founded in 2020, and launched the AI chat function YouChat in search engines before Google and Microsoft at the end of last year. In terms of financing, at the end of 2021, You.com completed a $20 million seed round of financing led by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and then completed a $25 million series of financing in the middle of last year.
Anthropic was founded in January, 2021. The latest report shows that shortly after accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from Google, it recently completed a new round of financing of 300 million dollars. After this financing, the value of Anthropic reached 4.1 billion dollars. Earlier, Anthropic raised $704 million through Series A and Series B financing in 2022.
Similarly, Cohere was founded in 2019, mainly providing access to large-scale language models and natural language processing (NLP) tools through APIs. Cohere has raised $170 million so far, including $125 million in Series B financing last year and $40 million in Series A financing in 2021. Earlier this year, it was reported in Reuters that Cohere was in talks to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in a round of financing, and the valuation of this startup may exceed 6 billion dollars after the completion of financing.
As for Hearth.AI, it should have been established in May, 2022. Except that it is the next generation management system (CRM) shown on its official website, we have not found any more public information. (Text/Zhang Xue, source/investment network)